2008-2015 The recession and
continued high unemployment,
sparked by the late-2000s financial
crisis, had many implications for HR.

In 2008 and 2009, the U.S. labor market
lost 8. 4 million jobs, or 6.1 percent
of all payroll employment—the most
dramatic employment contraction, by
far, of any recession since the Great
Depression. HR professionals not only
had to oversee these massive layoffs,
but had to find ways to cut costs, keep
morale up and ensure top talent was
engaged and retained.

1998 Ban the box—the name of
the international campaign by civil
rights groups and advocates for
ex-offenders aimed at persuading
employers to remove from their hiring
applications the check box that asks
if applicants have a criminal record—
actually kicked off as a movement
with the passage of House Bill 3528
in Hawaii in 1998. As of July 2015, 52

U.S. municipalities and 18 states had
in place legislation that “banned the
box” for government job applications
and also, in some cases, those of their
private contractors. This movement
has impacted HR and employers
looking to hire safe and competent
employees while complying with local
laws and federal guidelines.

June 22, 1999 The U.S. Supreme
Court issues decisions in three key
Americans with Disabilities Act cases—

Albertsons vs. Kirkingburg, Sutton vs.
United Airlines and Murphy vs. UPS,
ushering in a more employer-friendly
legal environment and stemming the
tide of ADA litigation.

Sept. 11, 2001 Al-Qaida terrorist
attacks—and their aftermath—on
the World Trade Center, Pentagon
and Flight 93 show many companies
the hidden and often untapped sense
of community and shared purpose
among workers. The attacks also
usher in new priorities for HR in the
realms of physical security and global
information management.

October 2001 Fraud at Enron
Corp. is revealed to the public when
the giant energy-services company
announces that it was actually worth

$1.2 billion less than previously
reported. The Enron case symbolizes
a host of corporate financial scandals
erupting at about the same time,
including WorldCom, Tyco, Global
Crossing, Adelphia and more. These
developments prompt soul-searching
in human resource circles about
HR’s role in promoting and policing
corporate ethics.

July 30, 2002 Congress enacts the
Sarbanes-Oxley Act, imposing sweeping
new legal requirements to mandate
and oversee corporate governance and
accountability, including many impacting
executive compensation.

percent and 34 percent, respectively,
of its U.S. workforce). Following that
announcement, other tech companies,
including Intel and Microsoft, released
their statistics and made monetary
commitments—as has Google—to
raise diversity in their ranks.

2015 A banner year for gay rights
as the federal government pronounced
that treating lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender workers less favorably
based on sex or gender stereotypes
is a violation of Title VII of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964. Also that year, the
U.S. Supreme Court decided in favor of
same-sex marriage.

Jan. 5, 2015 The Society for Human
Resource Management began accepting
exam applications for those seeking
its new SHRM Certified Professional
(SHRM-CP) and SHRM Senior Certified
Professional (SHRM-SCP). SHRM’s entry
into the HR-certification market created
huge reverberations in the HR-testing
arena, pitting SHRM against the HR
Certification Institute, the long-standing
leader in the field, and leaving HR leaders
to weigh the merits of both programs.

March 25, 2015 The U.S.
Supreme Court rules, in Young
v.UPS, that workplace policies that
deny accommodations to pregnant
workers that are provided to other
employees may violate the Pregnancy
Discrimination Act.

May 11, 2015 Though millennials
had entered the workforce already, this
marks the date when it was officially
reported by the Pew Research Center
analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data
that working millennials had officially
overtakenthe number of working
baby boomers. The emergence of
millennials has brought new and
different challenges to employers
looking to keep these younger
workers (adults ages 20 to 36) happy,
productive and committed, particularly
as the number of baby boomers leaving
the workforce continues to grow.

Nov. 8, 2016Donald Trump wins
the presidency on promises to thwart
illegal immigration, repeal and replace
the Affordable Care Act, and cut down
on government regulations, including
those affecting employers and the
workplace.

September 2009Fitbit launches
its first device, simply called Fitbit.
The wireless-enabled device, which
clips on to the user’s clothing, uses
an internal motion detector to track
the wearer’s movement, sleep and
calorie burn during both the day and
night. Many see the Fitbit as one of
the initiatives that ushered in the
wellness movement, which continues
to challenge employers in terms of
motivating and engaging employees
around healthy lifestyles.

2009-2017 The evolution of
human resource processes and
practices to cloud computing and
Software-as-a-Service continues to
transform the way HR technology
functions and the way human
resources influences organizations.

Such platforms have not only changed
the way businesses function, they also
continue to feed an explosive demand
for cloud-trained job candidates and
continue to widen the gap between this
hiring demand and talent supply.

March 23, 2010 President
Barack Obama signs the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act,
giving rise to the repercussions and
uncertainties surrounding healthcare
reform within HR communities and
workplaces that continue today.

July 21, 2010 President Obama
signs the Dodd-Frank Wall Street
Reform and Consumer Protection Act,
bringing about the most significant
changes to financial regulation in the
United States since the regulatory
reform that followed the Great
Depression. The law reconciles into
one final piece of legislation House and
Senate bills that each enforce Say on
Pay regulations and requires reporting
by all public companies on CEO to
median-employee pay ratios and other
compensation data.

2000-2010 and beyond
With the advent of mobile apps
used for services, the so-called
gig economy has grown. In this
economy, temporary, flexible jobs
are commonplace and companies
lean toward hiring independent
contractors and freelancers instead
of full-time employees. The surge
in gig jobs has thereby changed the
employer-employee relationship and
has led to the advent of ride-sharing
platforms such as Uber and Lyft.

June 20, 2011 The U.S.
Supreme Court decides in favor
of Wal-Mart in Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
vs. Dukes, denying about 1.5 million
current and former female employees
their request to be certified as a class
in what, other wise, would have been
the largest employment class-action
suit in history. The case has come
to symbolize the greatest victory to
date by an employer over ambitious
class-action litigation by the plaintiff’s
bar. Perhaps the biggest impact of the
decision involves the court’s rejection
of representative testimony as a
replacement for individual proof.

May 28, 2014 Google announces
its sub-par record when it comes to
hiring women, African-Americans
and Hispanics, becoming the first
tech company to divulge such
statistics (women comprising just
17 percent of its global workforce;
and blacks, Hispanics and Asians
accounting for just 1 percent, 2